How Developing Nations Are Leading in Blockchain Adoption

By Dr. Pooyan Ghamari, Swiss Economist and Visionary

The Leapfrog Revolution Nobody Predicted

While the West debates regulation and central bankers write 200-page reports on “digital assets,” something astonishing is happening: countries once labeled “emerging markets” are quietly becoming the global leaders in real-world blockchain deployment. They are not waiting for permission. They are building the future with code.

When Broken Systems Become the Perfect Launchpad

In developed nations, legacy financial and legal infrastructure is a fortress—expensive, slow, and fiercely defended by incumbents. In many developing nations, those fortresses never existed or already collapsed.

No functioning land registry? Build one on blockchain (Georgia, Ghana, India). Banks that exclude 70 % of the population? Let them use stablecoins and DeFi instead (Nigeria, Venezuela, Argentina). Corrupt middlemen skimming remittances? Cut them out with near-zero-cost transfers (El Salvador, Philippines, Kenya).

Weak institutions are not a bug for blockchain adoption—they are rocket fuel.

El Salvador Didn’t Ask Wall Street. It Just Made Bitcoin Legal Tender

September 7, 2021: a nation of 6.5 million people became the first country on Earth to declare Bitcoin legal tender. Critics laughed. The IMF panicked. Meanwhile, unbanked Salvadorans started receiving remittances fee-free, tourists paid for pupusas with Lightning, and the government built schools with volcanic-powered mining profits.

Love it or hate it, Bukele proved one thing: sovereign blockchain adoption can happen overnight when political will exists.

Nigeria: The Silent Giant Wakes Up

Nigeria has the highest peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading volume on the planet—higher than the United States. Why? Because when the central bank banned crypto accounts in 2021, Nigerians simply ignored it and kept trading $400 million a month anyway.

Today, Nigerian developers are building the next generation of DeFi protocols, remittance corridors, and NFT marketplaces while Silicon Valley argues about licensing.

Kenya’s M-Pesa Moment, But on Steroids

Fifteen years ago, Kenya invented mobile money with M-Pesa and leapfrogged straight past credit cards. History is repeating—only this time it’s blockchain.

From community savings DAOs in rural villages to Bitcoin-backed microloans in Kibera slum, Kenyans are once again proving that necessity is the ultimate accelerator of innovation.

India: A Billion People, One Blockchain at a Time

India’s government may talk tough on crypto, but its developers contribute more open-source code to Ethereum than any country except the United States. Meanwhile, states like Telangana and Maharashtra are rolling out blockchain land records, agricultural supply chains, and diploma verification systems that actually work.

Aadhaar showed the world how to give a billion people digital identity. India’s next gift may be showing how a billion people bank themselves without banks.

The Real Killer App: Identity, Property, and Escape from Poverty

In the Global South, three problems tower above all others:

• Proving who you are
• Proving what you own
• Accessing capital

Blockchain solves all three at once.

A farmer in Honduras can now tokenize his land and use it as collateral on a DeFi platform in Singapore. A refugee in Jordan carries her entire life history in a self-sovereign digital wallet. A street vendor in Lagos accepts USDC payments from customers in London without ever opening a bank account.

This is not speculation. This is survival—and it’s scaling faster than any IMF program ever did.

The West Is Studying Pilots. The Rest Are Shipping Products

While G7 countries run “CBDC sandbox trials” for 30,000 users, developing nations are already serving tens of millions:

• Argentina’s inflation victims hold more stablecoins per capita than almost anywhere else
• Vietnam consistently ranks in the global top 3 for crypto adoption
• Pakistan’s freelancers get paid in crypto because PayPal still doesn’t operate there

These are not experiments. These are live economies running parallel financial systems because the old one failed them.

The Ultimate Irony

The technology born in cypherpunk chat rooms and hyped in Silicon Valley venture pitches is finding its deepest, fastest adoption among people who never had the luxury of waiting for perfect regulation.

The future of blockchain is not being built in San Francisco conference halls or Brussels regulatory offices. It is being built under tin roofs in Nairobi, in mountain villages in El Salvador, and in the crypto meetups of Buenos Aires.

The so-called “developing” world isn’t catching up. For once, it is leading the way.

Dr. Pooyan Ghamari Swiss Economist and Visionary